Crazy Talk

The room was deathly quite; we all sat there staring at anything but each other. I don’t think we could’ve been more shocked about what Chad told us.

Wanda was, or I guess is Chad’s ex wife. That’s right; my brother had been married before Susan came into the picture. Chad and Wanda went to high school together until she dropped out in her senior year. They still ran into each other from time to time at one party or another but they only started going out a month after my parents died; Chad would’ve been 18 at the time. And for the record, Wanda was the one that I didn’t like, not Susan. It seemed that Chad had changed for the worst after they started dating. This to me meant he never had time for me anymore and at 8, I looked up to my brothers and I adored them so when they couldn’t spend time with me it sucked. I guess I still adore them, just not the blind adoration any more. Zach didn’t really care much for Wanda, he thought she was too needy and clingy for Chad but he figured it was a grief based relationship, so he didn’t say much at the time.

The following summer, Chad told us he was going to the lake with a group of his friends for the weekend. They did it all the time so it wasn’t a big deal until Zach ran into a couple of his friends the weekend he was supposed to be at the lake and they didn’t know anything about it. Needless to say, Zach hit the roof. Sure, Chad was old enough to take care of himself but Zach had it in his mind that he had to look out for everyone now that our parents were gone.

When Chad finally came back from his weekend at the ‘lake’, Zach jumped all over him and demanded to know where he went. Chad calmly stood in front of Zach with a hugh grin on his face and proudly told Zach that he asked Wanda to marry him, she said ‘yes’ and they eloped. Zach was so mad that he couldn’t even speak; he walked away from Chad and didn’t talk to him for weeks.

Chad’s first marriage didn’t last that long, only about 9 months, it seemed that they were doing ok until Wanda became pregnant. Up until that moment, they hadn’t changed much from being the teenagers they were when they were still in school; all night parties, not going to work, careless spending, not knowing where you would get your next meal from or where you would end up crashing. But the moment Wanda told Chad she was pregnant, he started to clean up his act and demanded that she do the same thing. He came to Zach, begging him to help him get his life in order, to help him be a man that his kid would be proud of.

Zach couldn’t say no, he can never say no even if he wanted too, Mary wouldn’t let him. Soon Chad and Wanda were staying with us so they could get on their feet and get out on their own, again. Chad had taken two jobs and worked almost 20 hours a day so Wanda didn’t have to worry about finding a job while she was pregnant. One day I had asked him why he never played with me anymore and he told me that he was working to do the right thing for once.

While Chad pretty much worked his fingers to the bone, Wanda sat around Zach’s house making Mary’s life difficult, not lifting a finger once to help her out with the housework, meals and always said she had things to do when ever Mary asked her to watch me so she could go run errands. When she got bored of sitting around, she’d disappear for hours at a time, only to come home when she knew Chad would be home. We had no idea what she was doing when she disappeared, we can only assume and it was never good things that we assumed.

Just before her the end of her first trimester, Wanda began to spot. When Chad took her to the doctor, they didn’t seem too concerned with it, they sent her home not long after she went there. A week later she started spotting again but didn’t tell anyone because she didn’t think that it was a big deal because it was the same as the last time; she told Chad later that she didn’t want him to miss anymore work just so they could tell her it was ok and send her home again. Unfortunately, it was a big deal, she lost the baby and things weren’t the same for them again.

Chad never blamed her for the miscarriage but Wanda blamed herself. A week after the baby died, she reconnected with her old life, and she started to party hard and pretty much quit eating as she slipped further and further into depression. Chad was worried about her, he tried to get help for her, tried to get her to talk to him or someone else about everything that happened but she refused saying she was fine. As she spiraled downwards, they began to fight constantly about every little thing, she would say that she wanted to get out of Zach’s house because she didn’t feel welcome because she killed the baby and Chad would tell her that they couldn’t afford anything else at that time but to hang in there and he’ll make sure her dreams came true.

I guess he took too long. One night while Chad was working, we were all going to go out for something to eat but Wanda refused to come with us, so she stayed at the house. Chad was delivering pizzas for extra cash at that time, it was slow so he decided to go home early to spend some time with her, he stopped off at the store to buy some flowers for her then he went home. The house was dark when he got home, he knew we were talking about going out for supper so he wasn’t too surprised, he figured that he’d relax and wait for her. He made his way to their room, opened the door, flipped on the light and smiled as he spotted Wanda on their bed.

A moment or two passed, he told us later as he tried to understand what he saw. When Wanda didn’t respond to him calling her name, he told us he walked over to the bed and that’s when he realized that she couldn’t even hear him. He dropped the flowers and grabbed for the phone, calling Zach because he couldn’t think what else to do. We were in the middle of dinner when Zach got the call; we watched the slight smile on his face disappear as Chad told him that he couldn’t get Wanda to wake up.

Zach told Chad to get her in the car and start to drive to the hospital, telling him which roads to take and to stay on that route, no matter what. While he was telling him which roads to take, he jumped up from the table and ran to the front counter and demanded to use their phone, which he used to call the ambulance to meet up with Chad.

We left the restaurant that night and spent what seemed like forever sitting in the hospital waiting room as we waited for the doctors to pump Wanda’s stomach and to find out if she would be ok.

Her failed attempt at suicide made Wanda realize that she needed help, she started a round of therapy. They tried to work things out together, Chad and Wanda but by this time they had grown so far apart that they decided it would be best for both of them if they divorced.

Their split was amicable, they still spoke to each other and sometimes they would get together and go out to dinner or a movie as friends. When Chad met and fell in love with Susan just over a year later, Wanda was extremely happy for him. After they got married the following summer and moved to Susan’s hometown, Chad lost all contact with Wanda, at Susan’s request.

******

I looked at Chad, he was back to lying on the couch only this time he was staring off into space. “Chad?” He turned his head towards me with a questioning look in his eyes. “How did Susan react?”

He stared at me for a moment, “How do you think she reacted? She refused to look at the house and demanded that we leave at once. Then when we got back in the van she started screaming at me for telling Wanda all about moving back here before we even decided. She accused me of setting up the viewing so I could see her again; she thinks I want to move back here so I can mess around with Wanda.”